He Eats Fried Worms

Watch Clips From 'How to Eat Fried Worms'

Standing Up to the Bully
The Bet

Though only 11, Luke Benward is already a Hollywood veteran. When he was five, he appeared alongside Mel Gibson in "We Were Soldiers," and more recently had a part in "Because of Winn-Dixie." He's now starring in "How to Eat Fried Worms," the first big-screen adaptation of the beloved children's book. Luke--followed by his mom,

, herself an actress--spoke to Beliefnet about the life of a child actor and what being Christian means to the family.

I really like how he makes friends with all the boys, even on--even some of the people on Joe's team and he has bravery to stand up to the bully.

What is the movie's lesson or message?

If you don't stand up to your fears, have bravery, loyalty, and you don't have friends, you'll never win. You'll never feel better about yourself.

Well, how I feel about that is I'd rather not people, after they see this movie, go home, find a worm on the ground and eat it.

Well, the movie is quite different from the book. The book has less characters. There's not a girl. He ends--in the book, he ends up liking worms, but in the movie, he ends up hating the worms. And also, he doesn't have a little brother in the book. And in the movie, he does. And in the book, it's 10 worms in one day and not 15 worms in 15 days.

When I was little, my mom was an actress, and she still is now, and she'd go on commercial auditions, and if they needed a mom and a son, she'd take me along, and that's how I got started.

And then, my first movie, "We Were Soldiers"--I was in kindergarten, and I was five, and my mom took me out of school and she brought me to the audition of it. And I wasn't ready at all. I didn't know any of the lines. And I just went in there, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and I said my citizenship pledge from kindergarten class. They thought I was so cute, so they hired me.

Yeah, he was awesome. He was so cool. First day, I wrestled with him. And, you know, my mom was really embarrassed. But, he has kids, so he's used to it. And also, during lunch, he didn't sit with like the casting director and the director. He sat with us kids at the kids' table and showed us magic tricks.

No, not really. I haven't talked to him.

Oh, man, my favorite movie. You know, I really like "Passion of the Christ." I like that movie. I also like "We Were Soldiers," and "Braveheart." And "Napoleon Dynamite"--that movie was funny.

I'm a Christian, and I just like the story. I liked what Mel did with it.

There's a tutor on set, and my mom tells them [at school] that I may be gone for like two months, and they'll send in the work to my mom, and the tutor will teach it to me. And when I go back, I'm supposed to have it all done. So it's like I wasn't gone, I was sitting there at my desk.

Usually, before my mom says, yes, we'll do the audition or no, we'll read the sides. And if I don't like the sides, we'll read the whole script. And if I still don’t like it and it's kind of, like, just bad, I'll say, mom, I really don't want to do this and she'll be like, okay. And we'll tell my agent and he'll be like, okay, that's fine.

Uh-huh.

I just kind of feel like I it's my choice to do what I want to do. And my agent, he's totally with it. He tells me, you can turn down any audition you don't want to.

Continued on page 2: You just get so used to people being mean... »